Contract by kart

The manager of a plant-hire firm who could not decide who to buy a new mini-excavator from ordered two suppliers to race each other in go-karts for the pounds 15,000 contracts. Alan Childs from Leach Lewis Plant Hire of Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, who won the race at Wingfield, Berkshire, and the contract, said: 'It was a damn good idea among all this doom and gloom.'